Reflection for Trinity Sunday - 15th June 2025
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.
That Trinitarian formula trips so easily off our tongues – I wonder how many times per day we sing it, at the end of psalms and at other times too? And in a monastic lifetime who knows! It is a formulation of the nature of God that marks us as Christians, refusing to reduce Christ to only spirit or only material. The dogmatic formulation came only after some centuries of Christian living and praying with the mystery revealed in the life of Jesus Christ, and in a way it solves nothing. It respects the mystery as one that is beyond our rational minds and which we can only approach in reverence and awe. After all a mystery solved is no longer a mystery…
From Advent through to Pentecost we have lived with the various mysteries of Jesus’ life but now, after the explosive joy of Pentecost we have been dropped into what we call ‘Ordinary Time’. The challenge of this time is to live out in our own lives the call of Jesus to usher in the Kingdom of God, to figure out what this mystery means for us here and now. Jesus at his Ascension ceased to be physically circumscribed in one location and has now disappeared into the heart of all creation. Material reality is caught up into the life of the Father and the gulf between matter and divinity has been bridged.
This is the great gift of Christianity amongst the religions of the world – that this material world matters, that its exquisite beauty and complexity, along with all the suffering and brokenness, are an expression of God’s being. We only exist because God is at the heart of all things, at every moment sustaining and enlivening us. Our bodily existence is not a trap from which we must escape but the crucible in which we are formed in love. I think it is our particular human call to transmute the raw energy of life into self-giving love, surrendering our lives to God. As our collect for this feast puts it, “in your life of self-giving love you show us the pattern of our own”1.
But how do we know about this life of self-giving love at the heart of God? Only as it was shown forth in the life of Jesus, whom we claim to be wholly God as well as wholly man. Through his passion and death we have seen the ultimate giving of self for others, vindicated in his resurrection. In the weeks since Easter we have been hearing of the apostles going out to preach the good news that they had received, empowered by the Holy Spirit. It was the good news that all are loved, forgiven and accepted by God, both Jews and Gentiles. We’ve seen the dawning realisation that God’s spirit, the spirit that was in Jesus, could be poured out upon anyone and draw us all into one body, a message that is as much needed now as it was then.
Before ever the dogma of the Trinity was formulated Christians were drawn into communities of love and care for one another, empowered by the spirit that was transforming them into the likeness of Christ. These communities were deeply attractive to outsiders, demonstrating a way of being very different from the prevailing world view that saw no value in people like slaves or the poor and uneducated. Of course these all-too human communities had their problems too and as we hear in the letters of Paul, had to wrestle with intractable human failings.
But at the heart of these communities was the sense that all were called into relationship with one another and with God, caught up into the heart of a God who is relationship. Ultimately our love for one another is founded in the love that flows in the heart of the Trinity.
During this ‘Ordinary Time’ we are called to find God in the midst of our daily lives, knowing God’s presence in our own hearts and in the hearts of everyone whom we meet. Our understanding of the mystery of God’s triune being is not expressed in our ability to understand the intellectual complexities of the dogma of the Trinity but in our ability to live within that mystery, loving and serving the God who is at the heart of all things yet infinitely transcendent. St Basil, whom we are celebrating today2, is a wonderful example of one who lived deeply immersed in the mystery of the triune God, embodying it both in his theological writings and in his practical service to the church and to all in need.
May we strive to be followers of St Basil and all our forebears in the faith. As our collect concludes: “Help us to know you, that finding you in all things we may praise you for ever, Father, Son and Spirit, unity in Trinity.”
Mother Anne - 14th June 2025
1Malling Abbey Collect for Trinity Sunday:
We praise and worship you, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. You reveal to us the mystery of your being; in your life of self-giving love you show us the pattern of our own. Help us to know you, that finding you in all things we may praise you for ever, Father, Son and Spirit, unity in Trinity.
2This reflection was delivered on 14th June, the eve of Trinity Sunday and feast of St Basil. St Basil, who lived in the 4th century, was an influential theologian and a father of Eastern monasticism. He was known for his care of the poor and underprivileged.